This is your brain on propaganda

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Next Comes What
Host: Andrea Pitzer
Episode: This is your brain on propaganda
Date: December 26, 2025
Theme:
In this episode, Andrea Pitzer explores how propaganda is shaping attitudes and policies against trans people in the U.S. and abroad, drawing lessons from the global history of strongman regimes and authoritarian propaganda. Examining parallels with past and present waves of hate, Pitzer discusses how these manufactured moral panics serve political ends—and how to resist and unmake their influence.

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Main Topics & Discussion Points

1. Propaganda's Role in Social Shifts

• Opening Context (00:36):
  • Pitzer reflects on the growing tide of hate and manipulation in U.S. politics, particularly targeted at trans people, and how it is hard to keep track of its developments.
    • “So much is being done to foster and manipulate hatred in the United States right now...” — Andrea Pitzer [00:36]
• Manufactured Scapegoating:
  • Jason Stanley (guest/expert) interjects with satirical asides highlighting how contemporary U.S. and U.K. leaders use bigotry as a political tool.
    • “Democrats don't care about anything other than maybe transing their kids.” — Jason Stanley [01:27]

2. Recent Anti-Trans Policies and Their Framing

• Federal and State Attacks:
  • Coverage of policy moves, such as attempts by RFK Jr.'s administration to ban gender-affirming care in hospitals participating in Medicare/Medicaid, and state-level measures like tip lines in Texas for bathroom policing.
    • “Headed up announcements banning hospitals participating in Medicare and Medicaid...” — Andrea Pitzer [01:46]
    • Humiliating enforcement, e.g., Texas bathroom guards (04:00)
  • U.S. House moves to criminalize care for trans minors; the psychological impacts on young people (“They don't believe that they have a future...” — [02:50])

3. Comparisons with International and Historical Parallels

• UK as a Negative Case Study:
  • Detailed look at how British media campaigns (esp. certain left-leaning feminists and editors) have laundered anti-trans talking points, flipping public opinion after years of progress.
    • “It was all laundered through major newspapers...” — Andrea Pitzer [05:25]
    • Christine Burns describes the mystery of UK’s hostility and its sudden, media-driven shift [05:40].
    • “It wasn't widespread until extremely recently...” — Jason Stanley [06:00]
  • Despite wide public support for pro-trans reforms in 2020, the government refused legal change due to media-driven backlash.
    • “Despite those results... decided not to change its current law.” — Andrea Pitzer [07:12]

4. Mechanisms and Myths of Demonization

• Copycat Rhetoric and “Protection” Language:
  • Recycled myths from anti-gay campaigns, conspiracy about chemicals causing queerness/transness.
    • “Today’s poisoned rhetoric mostly copies that used against gay and lesbian folks in prior decades.” — Andrea Pitzer [08:51]
    • “Alex Jones... putting chemicals in the water that were turning the frogs gay.” — Jason Stanley [09:33]
• Stripping Autonomy and Weaponizing “Protection”:
  • The framing of bathroom bills, healthcare bans, and civil restrictions as “protecting women” or “protecting children”—while in fact targeting and erasing marginalized people.
    • “The language of protection is often a first path to doing this.” — Andrea Pitzer [11:34]

5. Parallels to Historic Propaganda and Psychological Effects

• Cold War Echoes:
  • Reflection on how Cold War paranoia (red scare) made reasonable discourse impossible and was exploited for power.
    • “One of the things... was the degree to which Cold War propaganda... made any concrete discussion... almost impossible.” — Andrea Pitzer [13:57]
    • “One of the things... is how fragile civil liberties are and how willing people are to trade... for the promise of security.” — Clay Ryson [15:21]
• Consequences for Young People:
  • Psychological harm to trans youth—loss of hope, loss of access to medical care, and the toll of societal hate.
    • “The greatest possible harm out of all this will be to their ability to live their own lives and access medical care.” — Andrea Pitzer [17:06]

6. The Power and Danger of Propaganda Frames

• Entrenchment and Mindset:
  • Jason Stanley explains: “Everyone uses propaganda. It's a kind of communication that makes a case for a goal bypassing reason, really.” [22:28]
  • Given enough time, propaganda can completely remake society, flipping groups who would have once opposed hate into supporting it.
    • “Given enough funding and given enough time, propaganda can completely remake society...” — Andrea Pitzer [22:53]
• Shifting Public Views:
  • Millions in the UK who once favored trans rights have changed positions after years of focused propaganda.
    • “Millions of people in the UK who once supported human rights and respect for trans people have switched their views...” — Andrea Pitzer [22:20]

7. Media, Elections, and the Limits of Anti-Trans Rhetoric

• Media Collaboration and Litigation:
  • National media outlets feed anti-trans narratives (“just asking questions”) that quickly feed into court cases and legal arguments.
    • “The New York Times to like pipeline from literally from publication to being used in this litigation was like six days.” — Jason Stanley [24:29]
• Elections Show Diminishing Returns:
  • Spending on anti-trans TV ads has not paid off electorally; Virginia poll shows only 3% of voters cite trans student policies as a top concern.
    • “It seems to be more and more of a losing issue.” — Andrea Pitzer [25:45]

8. How to Respond: Strategies for Resistance

• Personal Stories and Depersonalizing Propaganda:
  • Example: Sarah McBride in Congress refuses to take the bait on “bathroom bills,” stays focused on constituent needs and humanizes debate.
    • “She is most interested in sidestepping the kind of combat she sees as unproductive.” — Andrea Pitzer [27:26]
    • “All any of us want is to live a life of purpose and happiness and wholeness.” — Sarah McBride (quoted by Pitzer) [28:12]
• Effective Activism:
  • Social media can support the vulnerable but rarely changes opponents’ minds.
  • Real shifts happen through local relationships, support for national organizations, and insisting on honest, humanizing journalism.
    • “Propaganda is weakest on the local level and in real lives.” — Andrea Pitzer [29:59]
• Reporting that Counters Propaganda:
  • Mention of a Popular Science article that correctly reports on actual data, not hype.
  • “It’s a careful and thoughtful, iterative type of care.” — Jason Stanley [30:58]

9. The Personal and the Concrete

• Protecting Kids and Building Community:
  • Pitzer advocates for galvanizing local officials, volunteering, and community events that make trans people visible and integrated—as real humans, not abstractions.
  • The presence of love/support in daily life is the hardest thing for propaganda to break down.
    • “The more present the protection and love is in everyday lives, the harder propaganda has to work to dismantle those community networks and attitudes.” — Andrea Pitzer [33:22]
• Solidarity and Elegance in Response:
  • Pedro Pascal’s reflection on standing up to hate: “It’s a situation that deserves the utmost elegance so that something can actually happen and people will actually be protected.” — Quoted by Andrea Pitzer [34:22]

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Memorable Quotes with Timestamps

• “So much is being done to foster and manipulate hatred in the United States right now...” — Andrea Pitzer [00:36]
• “Democrats don't care about anything other than maybe transing their kids.” — Jason Stanley [01:27]
• “They don't believe that they have a future because they listen to the words that come out of our mouths...” — Andrea Pitzer [02:50]
• “It was all laundered through major newspapers...” — Andrea Pitzer [05:25]
• “It wasn't widespread until extremely recently. As late as 2017, we'd made steady advances for the trans people in Britain...” — Jason Stanley [06:00]
• “Despite those results... decided not to change its current law.” — Andrea Pitzer [07:12]
• “It’s the same just asking questions approach that serves to actively undermine any comprehension of what’s really taking place and what public policies would be ideal.” — Andrea Pitzer [08:51]
• “The blurring of the lines between sexes and radical social agendas is a hatred for nature as God designed it.” — Jason Stanley [10:37]
• “The language of protection is often a first path to doing this.” — Andrea Pitzer [11:34]
• “One of the things that is important... is how fragile civil liberties are and how willing people are to trade... for the promise of security.” — Clay Ryson [15:21, paraphrased by Pitzer]
• “Everyone uses propaganda. It's a kind of communication that makes a case for a goal bypassing reason, really.” — Jason Stanley [22:28]
• “Given enough funding and given enough time, propaganda can completely remake society...” — Andrea Pitzer [22:53]
• “It seems to be more and more of a losing issue.” — Andrea Pitzer [25:45]
• “She is most interested in sidestepping the kind of combat she sees as unproductive.” — Andrea Pitzer [27:26]
• “Propaganda is weakest on the local level and in real lives.” — Andrea Pitzer [29:59]
• “All any of us want is to live a life of purpose and happiness and wholeness.” — Sarah McBride [28:12]
• “The more present the protection and love is in everyday lives, the harder propaganda has to work to dismantle those community networks and attitudes.” — Andrea Pitzer [33:22]
• “It’s a situation that deserves the utmost elegance so that something can actually happen and people will actually be protected.” — Pedro Pascal (via Andrea Pitzer) [34:22]

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Key Takeaways & Actionable Insights

• Mass propaganda against trans people mirrors tactics used historically against other vulnerable groups, and is effective at flipping even those previously supportive.
• Policy and media attacks rely heavily on dishonest “protection” rhetoric, frequently adopting frameworks from previous homophobic and xenophobic panics.
• Direct, compassionate, real-life relationships—and focus on positive, humanizing local reporting—offer the most robust antidote to propaganda.
• Grassroots organizing, honest journalism, and sticking to facts rather than propaganda frameworks is critical.
• Propaganda is powerful but not totalizing; its electoral effectiveness is waning, and new frameworks of solidarity and local action are possible and essential.

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For more, support Andrea Pitzer and the Next Comes What podcast at andreapitzer.com.

Transcript

[Andrea Pitzer]

Hi everybody. This is going to be our last Next comes what for 2025. I hope you all are having or have already had some happy holidays and that we all might get a wonderful start to 2026. Who could this be?

[Jason Stanley]

Hello, it's the Mayor.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Thanks to each one of you for being a part of this podcast reaching hundreds of thousands of people in its first year.

[Jason Stanley]

I want to do the because that's about new beginnings. Yes, and this is beginning.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Thank you also to Jason Sattler for all his work producing each episode. And a special thank you to those of you who are paid subscribers to my newsletter, Degenerate Art. That newsletter is the basis for this podcast and if you would like to support it, you can find out how to sign up on the homepage of my website. Andrea pitzer.com. Onto the podcast so so much is being done to foster and manip hatred in the United States right now, ladies.

[Jason Stanley]

And gentlemen, they are not sending their best.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It can honestly be hard to keep up with.

[Jason Stanley]

Omar Fateh was Ilyan Omar's candidate for mayor of Mogadishu. I mean Minneapolis.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But I am going to talk about the way that propaganda creates social shifts because the implications are huge and they're underway right now.

[Jason Stanley]

Democrats don't care about anything other than maybe transing their kids.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Last week at the Hoover building in Washington, D.C. secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Current evidence.

[Jason Stanley]

Does not support claims that puberty blockers, raw sex hormones and surgeries are safe and effective.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Headed up announcements banning hospitals participating in Medicare and Medicaid, which is nearly all hospitals.

[Jason Stanley]

Puberty blockers are prescribed to children all.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Of the time, banning them from providing gender affirming medical care to trans minors.

[Jason Stanley]

It is not just trans kids, which is why the Supreme Court ruling and all of the laws that have passed that seek to ban gender affirming care specifically mention that they are banning puberty blockers if they are being used to treat gender dysphoria.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that criminalizes the provision of gender affirming medical care for any transgender person under 18.

[Jason Stanley]

I spend a lot of time in.

[Andrea Pitzer]

LGBTQ clubs and high schools talking to young people who are shocked when I come in and tell them that as.

[Jason Stanley]

A queer woman, I'm a member of.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Congress, and they say, do you know any trans people your age? It should be noted that this bill is unlikely to make it through the Senate because they don't believe that they.

[Jason Stanley]

Will make it to 40.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They don't believe that they will make it to 50 or 60. They don't believe that they have a future because they listen to the words.

[Jason Stanley]

That come out of our mouths and.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They know.

[Jason Stanley]

That half of the people.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In this chamber do not care if they survive. But even on the state level, we're seeing more and more extreme proposals and ridiculous actions, as with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Angela Paxton filed for divorce on biblical.

[Jason Stanley]

Grounds following, quote, recent discoveries she does not believe that her marriage honors God.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Creating a tip line for those who believe that trans women have been allowed to use a woman's bathroom.

[Jason Stanley]

We're seeing it all across Texas where people are just being blatantly discriminated profiled and it is something that is a choice that is now going to have to weigh on me every time I make it.

[Andrea Pitzer]

These attitudes lead to humiliating enforcement measures, as when the Texas Department of Public Safety officers were photographed guarding the women's bathroom.

[Jason Stanley]

Civil rights attorney Austin Kaplan said this may encourage illegal behavior. He said there are three areas of the Texas penal code that outlaw taking pictures of someone in a bathroom. That's going to potentially lead to criminal liability for people that do that.

[Andrea Pitzer]

So today I want to talk about how institutional power holders are ginning up hatred against trans people for political gain, how that parallels other movements in the US and abroad.

[Jason Stanley]

Little Freudian slip there.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And why the more deeply that propaganda gets entrenched, the harder it becomes to do anything about it or even to have a reality based conversation about any particular group that's been the focus of long term propaganda. I've spoken before about transphobia in the UK and how left leaning women and self identified feminists bought into this wave of hate that has inexplicably turned into almost a full time job for J.K. rowling, accusing trans people of everything from molesting children to turning lesbians extinct. Because, and let me just check my notes for a second, they claim it's deeply uncool, is so uncommon, and is.

[Jason Stanley]

Now bottom of the heap to be a lesbian.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The heap of I'm not sure. And it was all laundered through major newspapers with several female editors attacking the existence of trans people in public life or allowing their reporters to Christine Burns.

[Jason Stanley]

Editor of Trans Britain why is the UK so hostile to trans people? It's a mystery to all of us.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The situation got bad enough in November 2018 that the US Guardian wrote a public response to the UK Guardian staff over an editorial they had written.

[Jason Stanley]

It wasn't widespread until extremely recently. As late as 2017, we'd made steady advances for the trans people in Britain with legislation that protected our employment rights, our right to be served in shops and use other services, and of course, the Gender Recognition act, which I was part of bringing forward in 2004.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It's an important point to note that as late as September 2020, the UK government published results of a public consultation that showed wide support for all aspects of reforming how the public and the government interacts with trans people. 64% were in favor of ending an existing requirement that those who wanted to legally change their gender had to have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. And 80% were in favor of removing the requirement for a medical report to go with that. However, despite those results from the public consultation, the UK government decided not to change its current law.

[Jason Stanley]

I would blame that directly on our media.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And now, five years later, in a poll from February, the kind of damage that results from years of propaganda became clear.

[Jason Stanley]

We changed the law many times to make life safer for trans people over a period of about 15 years. And most people didn't even notice we were there because we don't impinge on people's lives.

[Andrea Pitzer]

There is now just a 1 percentage point difference between those who believe that trans folks should be able to change both their public and and their legal gender and those who believe they should be able to change neither.

[Jason Stanley]

It wasn't until about 2017 that a confected campaign was launched with certain of Britain's newspapers, newspapers in particular, making a big issue that suddenly we went to having with some newspapers three or four articles, very negative articles. Yeah, I'm reading some of the headlines a week.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It's a tremendous endeav devastating loss of support for trans people in the uk.

[Jason Stanley]

They figured it was if they were going to tackle the success of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people, then they should begin by trying to chip one of those letters off the block.

[Andrea Pitzer]

So what happens to make these kinds of changes?

[Jason Stanley]

Kennedy shared a theory a while ago that man made chemicals in the environment are making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Today's poisoned rhetoric. Most copies that used against gay and lesbian folks in prior decades. Chances are someone you know is a homosexual, even though you may not be aware of it. It's the same just asking questions approach that serves to actively undermine any comprehension of what's really taking place and what public policies would be ideal. These chemicals that we are just raining.

[Jason Stanley]

Down on our children right now to induce these very profound sexual changes in.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Them until a group is sufficiently demonized, some kind of mythology has to be spun up.

[Jason Stanley]

Alex Jones went viral for making similar comments a few years ago. He said they were putting chemicals in the water that were turning the the frogs gay. Now, the experts that we talk, we talked to about this. They basically said, you're comparing apples to oranges here. We're humans. Frogs are amphibians, humans. Our sex is determined at the moment of conceptions. Frogs sex is determined by a number of environmental factors.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In the case of trans people, they had fought for decades and slowly made institutional progress toward trans rights and respect. Doctors and hospitals had been working out treatment plans. Pediatricians had consulted with researchers to determine best practices. Legal frameworks were evolving.

[Jason Stanley]

Repeat after me. I, Jim O'. Neill. I, Jim O'.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Nehill.

[Jason Stanley]

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, Jim, is a critical piece in assuring the success of this agency over the next four years.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But demonization requires that kind of slow deliberation and careful determination to be disregarded entirely.

[Jason Stanley]

The blurring of the lines between sexes and radical social agendas is a hatred for nature as God designed it.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Political players who seek to use a targeted group for political gain first have to pretend that none of that careful deliberation ever happened.

[Jason Stanley]

American Medical association, the American Academy of Pediatrics peddled the lie that chemical and surgical sex rejecting procedures could be good for children who suffer from gender dysphoria.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They have to present the rights of the targeted group as happening and expanding secretly, quickly, and dishonestly.

[Jason Stanley]

Men are men. Men can never become women. Women are women. Women can never become men.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Often the first thing that goes is the stripping of autonomy from people.

[Jason Stanley]

Children are innocent and they need our protection.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The language of protection is often a first path to doing this. We are protecting this V group from that aggressive population. This is the framework you see in the UK that women's rights are threatened by recognizing trans women as women and giving them similar rights.

[Jason Stanley]

I would characterize this as a bit like people wrapping themselves in the trappings of Christian religion in order to practice white supremacy or. Or whatever other line they want to take. I don't think the people we're talking about really are feminists.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Sometimes these political actors will be claiming to protect the targeted undesirable group itself.

[Jason Stanley]

What does this do to sexual development and children?

[Andrea Pitzer]

This is the model in the US where for now, the government and too many media outlets pretend to be protecting trans children.

[Jason Stanley]

Nobody knows we know what it does to frogs.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This is also parallel to the language of we are protecting Jews. Joining us now is Peter Beinart, an editor at large at Jewish Currents. He is the author of Being Jewish.

[Jason Stanley]

After the Destruction of A Reckoning in.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The Trump administration's attempt to suppress free speech.

[Jason Stanley]

On the one hand, the Trump administration is boasting that Northwestern is going to treat all students equally, irrespective of race, religion, national origin, et cetera. And then literally in the next sentence, it says, and it's also going to do this special thing to protect Jewish.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Students, even if the people they're silencing turn out themselves to be Jewish.

[Jason Stanley]

This is in a way a kind of importing of the Israeli model of what makes, what makes Jews safe, as opposed to the traditional American model, which comes out of the American Jewish role in the civil rights movement, which argues that the safety of American Jews comes from arguing for equality under the law and fighting against bigotry for all groups.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Perhaps most monstrous is this public pretense that the Trump administration has any interest in protecting children whatsoever. We have Jess Michaels, an Epstein survivor.

[Jason Stanley]

And now an advocate for transparency and.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Accountability, while the man in the White House desperately tries to cover up his involvement with the most notorious pedophile of our century.

[Jason Stanley]

Ghislaine Maxwell's had more communication with this DOJ than any of us have had.

[Andrea Pitzer]

When I was writing my first book, the Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov, in vain would Nabokov describe how his nymphet was one of the most innocent and pure among the gallery of slaves he had created as characters. To no avail would Vera remind reporters of how a captive Lolita cried herself to sleep each night. One of the things that it was really difficult to get across, and this was just 13 years ago, was the degree to which Cold War propaganda and paranoia made any concrete discussion of how to deal with the Soviet Union almost impossible.

[Jason Stanley]

They're making it laws where you can't.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Drink when you want to, you can't, you have to wear a seat belt when you're driving and pretty soon we're going to become this country. There were foaming at the mouth types who were sure that anyone who wanted civil rights for black people or women was a communist about to open fire on the streets.

[Jason Stanley]

Now turning to the White house, where.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A 73 year old legal statute is being used to defend the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. The Immigration and Nationality act of 1952 was passed amid anti communist fears. During the early Cold War, there were cynical politicians who were using fear to garner more power. Author and reporter Clay Ryson joins to discuss what past political, historical hysteria tells us about the present, it might sound similar to today.

[Jason Stanley]

One of the things that is important to keep in mind when we think back from our present moment, or maybe recent past, is how, how fragile civil liberties are and how eager, how willing people are to trade some civil liberties for the promise of security.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But it was actually different.

[Jason Stanley]

Part of that message coming from President Truman and from Congress was that this war has to be fought domestically as well, that we have an obligation to be 100% security minded.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The Cold War binary tended to split everything into teams like we see today.

[Jason Stanley]

It was a period of rampant sort of unchecked anti communist hysteria.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But the Soviets were actually doing a lot of bad stuff and that needed to be addressed.

[Jason Stanley]

There was a real reason for it. Look, there were Soviet espionage in the United States, there was the Cold War, obviously.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yet the hysteria around that government was such that how to form actual policy became incredibly loaded, almost too loaded for any rational discussion.

[Jason Stanley]

But it got out of hand in a. In a pretty dangerous way and, and scary way where even teachers and postal workers were being called into question for their loyalty to America.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Trans K Adults, however, are not actually endangering anyone.

[Jason Stanley]

I just finished watching the Matrix with my then 16 year old and I was sitting patiently on the couch listening as she courageously began to find her voice and tell me that she is transgender.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The greatest possible harm out of all this will be to their ability to live their own lives and access medical care.

[Jason Stanley]

What would you do if you were in my place? I was an ordained pastor and an evangelical one at that, and that is.

[Andrea Pitzer]

What RFK Jr and his henchmen went after so radically last week.

[Jason Stanley]

A few days later, I was still processing all of this and I can remember asking my daughter a question that I now see as insensitive. But I asked her, so do you think that you were born transgender or did something happen that caused you to become transgender? After all, that's what we non trans people want to argue about. Nature or nurture. But my daughter quickly put an end to all that by saying, does it matter?

[Andrea Pitzer]

Along with banning hospitals that participate in Medicare and Medicaid from providing gender affirming medical care to trans minors.

[Jason Stanley]

Minors. Do we love minors? I love minors.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They also have targeted Medicaid dollars from being used in these procedures.

[Jason Stanley]

I'm not here to share my faith journey with you, and I'm certainly not here to tell you what your beliefs should be. I'll just say that it was because of my faith and my love for my child that I became a trans ally.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They are even threatening companies that make chest binders.

[Jason Stanley]

In 2024 alone, more than 650 bills were introduced in 43 states and nearly 80 at the federal level targeting trans people and seeking to block them from accessing health care, education, legal recognition, and even the right to publicly exist. More than 45 of those bills have passed into law, and 100 of them are still in process.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In the UK, there was an oversized role for a handful of women who were respected on the left, but turned out to be cultural reactionaries. They're not just attacking trans people. They are narrowing the definition of womanhood to something small, fragile, easily controlled, and that hurts all of us. They have now partnered with right wing actors to create a controversy where there was none. But let's look at the actual statistics on who poses the biggest threat to women's safety and managed to upend so much progress that had been made demonizing trans people in ways that will take decades for society to recover from. Whether you are CIS or trans, the.

[Jason Stanley]

Most common threat to your safety is.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The same cisgender men. CIS men commit the overwhelming majority of violence against partners, strangers, co workers and friends. In the US it's more a case of a resurgence of weaponized homophobia from the 70s and 80s.

[Jason Stanley]

I saw my and heard my parents talking about gay people, you know, warning me not to get into cars with strangers and why, and that homosexuals were older men that were around school in the bushes that, you know, waited for me to come out of the schoolyard and to lure me into the bushes. I mean, I was subject to the same stereotypes.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Politicians and religious figures have used the tried and tested tactic of framing any shift in gender roles and rights to be an attack on evangelical Christians or even society itself.

[Jason Stanley]

JD Vance has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, altering his views on racism, Donald Trump, and transgender rights.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yet in both cases, we see the nationalization and abstraction of the issue as people pick a team that they're on and then respond reactively to the opposite side.

[Jason Stanley]

According to Sophia Nelson, a former classmate and close friend, Vance's earlier positions were notably different. At one point, Vance supported Nelson's transition and expressed criticism of the candidate he now supports.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Sometimes it's the case that there are clearly good guys and bad guys.

[Jason Stanley]

They shared a memory of Vance bringing them home baked treats as a recovery gift shortly after their top surgery. Messages also show that Vance attended San Francisco Pride in 2015, and this is one of them. Vance and Nelson's friendship ended in 2021 after Vance supported a bill in Arizona banning gender affirming care for youth.

[Andrea Pitzer]

So if you reactively oppose the people who are demonizing vulnerable groups, you have good odds of doing the right thing in terms of policy and voting well.

[Jason Stanley]

Nelson pointed out the robust medical consensus showing how this care saves lives. Vance dismissed them.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yet this very dynamic can be used by bad faith actors to reinforce their propaganda and keep those they've brainwashed from ever rethinking what they've signed onto.

[Jason Stanley]

I'm a never Trump guy. I never liked him.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The more straight up adversarial the conversation becomes, the more entrenched people's views become as well.

[Jason Stanley]

Some of the comments coming out of that two part article include these from the first female Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, about the Vice President of the United States, J.D. vance, and his political shifts from a quote never Trumper to a MAGA acolyte. There's also something she says is sort.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Of political, but at the same time we need to be aware of just how effective propaganda is over time.

[Jason Stanley]

My name is Jason Stanley. I'm the author of five books, most recently How Fascism, the Politics of US and Them.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Millions of people in the UK who once supported human rights and respect for trans people have switched their views in the last decade.

[Jason Stanley]

Everyone uses propaganda. It's a kind of communication that makes a case for a goal bypassing reason, really.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In the last five years, in response.

[Jason Stanley]

To this ongoing campaign, we have these irrational biases. And what propaganda does is it takes notions like freedom, integrity, and it weds them to these irrational biases.

[Andrea Pitzer]

If you think such a campaign could never affect you, you might be right about this particular issue. But in my years of looking at how authoritarianism rose and how various groups have been targeted around the world in the last 130 years, I will tell you that given enough funding and given enough time, propaganda can completely remake society and draw support from groups and people who would previously have been completely opposed to the ideas under discussion.

[Jason Stanley]

Why was killing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis called Operation Iraqi Freedom? Because the idea was somehow freedom is what Americans do. If we're doing it, it must be freedom.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The longer this attempt to use trans people as a way to terrorize and mobilize a political constituency continues, the more effective it will become. Even those very much opposed to it after years of propaganda will find their views shifting to accommodate the arguments and rhetoric of people in positions of power and those who get the most oxygen to disseminate their views. So how do we combat it then? In the information deserts of the US it's very difficult right now. We are far enough along in the process. A lot of shifting has already happened. It's made worse by the fact that so many vital parts of the US news landscape are now owned by or beholden to those aligned with the administration. Even the most powerful independent outlets have bought into the just asking questions model of reporting.

[Jason Stanley]

The New York Times to like pipeline from literally from publication to being used in this litigation was like six days.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In one case that fails to assess sources, knowledge and motivations while amplifying the views of those who wish to roll back others rights to self determination.

[Jason Stanley]

It was in early February another horrific, absolutely untrue at every turn, easily debunked. But like Pamela Paul, op ed came out and within less than a week it was cited literally in Idaho's briefing. In this case.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It's important to understand that not all hope is lost, not by a long shot. This emphasis on anti trans rhetoric has really not paid off in the elections, at least since last year. In the presidential election, Mr. Trump and.

[Jason Stanley]

Republican congressional candidates made rolling back federal protections for transgender people a big issue. By one count, they spent nearly $215 million on network TV ads on the issue, much of it focusing on gender affirming care for minors.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It seems to be more and more of a losing issue. In fact, an October survey of Virginia voters showed only 3% cited policies about transgender students as their top There is absolutely room to step in and room to make a difference before these frameworks harden and take hold completely. And if you do want to be involved in how to address the rising wave of hate against trans folks, the answer in many cases is the same as how best to deal with hate against immigrants. Propaganda is strongest wherever a shouting match is most likely to break out, wherever people are most likely to be reminded of which team they're on.

[Jason Stanley]

You said that you're a trans woman? I. Trans female? Yes, ma'. Am. Sir, do you have a penis?

[Andrea Pitzer]

People's minds rarely get changed on social media.

[Jason Stanley]

That's horrible. You're the one. You're the one that brought that into the discussion. You're the one that never said anything about genitalia. Okay.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I think this is why we see Sarah McBride, the first trans member elected to the House of Representatives, respond the way she does to these issues.

[Jason Stanley]

We are two legislative days away from the Affordable Care act tax credits expiring, when millions of people will see their health care premiums skyrocket. And GOP leadership, with that deadline fast approaching, has decided to Schedule 2 votes on anti trans bills and precisely zero votes on extending the Affordable Care act tax credits.

[Andrea Pitzer]

People were angry instead of some cases at her that she has not been more combative over certain issues.

[Jason Stanley]

I now recognize the representative from Delaware, Mr. McBride. Thank you, madam Chair.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But I think she is most interested in sidestepping the kind of combat she sees as unproductive.

[Jason Stanley]

I get it's hard to understand what it feels like to be trans. I get that it is hard to understand what it feels like to be me.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Baited by her fellow representatives, she took away the bathroom issue entirely and suggested she was more interested in serving her voters.

[Jason Stanley]

I was a kid once. I didn't have the courage to come out until I was 21, but it's a fact I have known about myself for my entire life.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In her speech on the Capitol steps last week, she kept the conversation on a human level, talking about her own history as a trans person.

[Jason Stanley]

All any of us want is to live a life of purpose and happiness and wholeness. None of us know how long we have. None of us know how much time we have on this planet. It is already hard enough to raise a family. It is already hard enough to be a kid. And government should not make it harder.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It's an incredible challenge to try to undo political framing established by propaganda. And I think she's taking the approach of simply refusing to participate in the standard arguments in the standard ways because they are likely to be useless.

[Jason Stanley]

Sarah McBride was key to turning four Republicans against Marjorie Taylor Greene's transphobic bill, according to her colleague, Representative Becca Ballant.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Which isn't to say you shouldn't express support for trans people on social media. You absolutely should. It can be a great place to help vulnerable people know that you have their back. And you absolutely should tell your elected representatives what you want them to support and give to national organizations protecting the legal rights of trans people and everyone else to live lives of hope and self determination and freedom. And elected representatives and national organizations need to be looking at how to limit the influence the billionaire class has on our information sphere. But if you're concerned about that propaganda, remember that propaganda is weakest on the local level and in real lives. It is weakest where it comes to seeing effects on human beings. So support those doing reporting that actually covers the real lives and issues confronting trans folks. It's very hard simply even to do good reporting at this point. Reporting that doesn't get swept into caricatures or horse races on who is winning the information wars. But it was great to see Hannah SEO's piece in Popular Science last week, where she just laid out the issues with trans folks, reporting data on a recent study showing that trans youth almost never detransition in the first several years after a social transition, she explains. The study shoots down popular misconceptions and deliberate distortions, includes the caveats about what we can't know from the study yet.

[Jason Stanley]

Lindsey Dawson is the director of LGBTQ health policy at kff, which is an independent source of information on national health.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Issues and lays out what kind of follow up will be required to get answers. If you really scour the evidence, you will find occasionally minors are accessing this type of care. This is rare, and it is in cases where minors are experiencing really prolonged gender dysphoria and these conversations and decisions are made very carefully between minors, providers and parents. It's not something that happens overnight.

[Jason Stanley]

It's a careful and thoughtful, iterative type of care.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This kind of being able to simply see the issue at hand and report on it is the kind of thing that propaganda tends to destroy, and it can make a publication vulnerable when it does this honest reporting.

[Jason Stanley]

Why all this political attention to what sounds like a very small number?

[Andrea Pitzer]

It's a really small number of people, and even among that small group, smaller shares are accessing gender affirming medical care. Overhead narratives are a good way to understand the big picture, and they're a way to create meaning. But they're also the easiest place to tell lies and distort realities because they're removed from what's happening on the ground.

[Jason Stanley]

Trump's framing this as protecting women, as trying to help women. What do you make of that?

[Andrea Pitzer]

I mean, it really follows in the footsteps of many of the debates that we saw with reproductive care and is aimed at limiting access to services for a group of people based on sex and gender lines. And once that overhead framework takes hold, no matter how dishonest it is, even if it's completely wrong, opposing it rarely works because even that opposition plays into the propaganda frame, giving more weight and attention to those who wish to do harm to vulnerable people.

[Jason Stanley]

What's the effect? Or what do you think the effect is on transgender people of all this, the discussion about it, the focus on it, and especially transgender adolescents.

[Andrea Pitzer]

There are trans youth who are denied access to medically necessary care that could prevent significant mental health problems, potentially even suicidality. So you can also find out who is helping trans kids on the ground near you, see what kind of support is most useful. For those groups, it might be galvanizing local officials to act to protect these kids, it might involve volunteering or giving money for or helping to organize community activities and resources that let them live more full lives and simultaneously normalize them in your community as fully human, with equal rights to be present and public as anyone else.

[Jason Stanley]

My biggest regret in life is that I never had a childhood without that pain. I marvel at the courage of transgender young people today who are sharing themselves with their families and this world, despite the toxicity and the hate that too often emanates from the building behind me and from politicians within it.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The more present the protection and love is in everyday lives, the harder propaganda has to work to dismantle those community networks and attitudes. But the more you can speak about actual people on the ground and matters you've experienced directly, the less the larger argument over these issues will devolve into the equivalent of two kids arguing politics based on what their parents have told them. Actor Pedro Pascal is looking back at calling author Jake UK Rowling a heinous loser for her anti trans views post if you want to now. Pascal, in a Vanity Fair interview, said his comment growing into a larger story made him feel like that kid that got sent to the principal's office a lot for behavioral issues in public schools in Texas, feeling scared and thinking, what did I do? It might actually build solidarity among those opposed to the current demonization of trans people. The one thing that I would say I agonized over a little bit was just, am I helping? Am I helping? It's a situation that deserves the utmost elegance so that something can actually happen and people will actually be protected. But if and when you want to dismantle the frameworks of propaganda, think about acting closer to home. And that's it for today. Here's to standing up together for what's right in more effective ways in 2026. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with one person who's.

[Jason Stanley]

Looking for ways to survive this mess.

[Andrea Pitzer]

To support this podcast, please become a paid [e-mail] and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcast.